* * * * * THE COLD hands call upon abysmal Gloom: | |
| Strange frondage murmers in a darkling morn: | |
| Orphaned men cowed round the fires forlorn: | |
| Nile shrouds his fountains: the dim living tomb | |
| Of Africa still closed, Death’s blank-eyed doom— | 5 |
| No face beloved, no land where he was born— | |
| Guerdons the warrior! No prayed-for bloom | |
| Of home-love crowns him ere the year outworn; | |
| But while faint eyes look far away with trust, | |
| Death spurns the soul’s quenched altar in the dust! | 10 |
| … Is all, then, failure? Lives no Father there? | |
| Do living hearts but supplicate dead air? | |
| Is this the end of the Promethean | |
| Indomitable, all-enduring man? | |
| |
Who calls it failure?
God fulfils the prayer: | 15 |
| He is at home; he rests; the work is done. | |
| He hath not failed, who fails like Livingstone! | |
| Radiant diadems all conquerors wear | |
| Pale before his magnificent despair; | |
| And whatsoever kingdoms men have won, | 20 |
| He triumphs dead, defeated, and alone, | |
| Who learned sublimely to endure and dare! | |
| For holy labour is the very end, | |
| Duty man’s crown, and his eternal friend; | |
| Reason from Chaos wards the world’s grand whole; | 25 |
| All Nature hath Love’s martyrdom for goal. | |
| Who nobly toils, though none be nigh to see, | |
| He only lives—he lives eternally. | |
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